Dreams

Let me sleep this night away,
Till the dawning of the day;
Then at th' opening of mine eyes
I, and all the world, shall rise.

In this world, the Isle of Dreams,
While we sit by sorrow's streams,
Tears and terrors are our themes,
Reciting:

But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young eternity,
Uniting

In that whiter Island, where
Things are evermore sincere:
Candour here, and lustre there,
Delighting:

There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horror call,
To create, or cause at all
Affrighting.

There, in calm and cooling sleep,
We our eyes shall never steep,
But eternal watch shall keep,
Attending

Pleasures such as shall pursue
Me immortalized, and you;
And fresh joys, as never too
Have ending.

In a dream, Love bade me go
To the galleys there to row;
In the vision I ask'd why?
Love as briefly did reply,
'Twas better there to toil, than prove
The turmoils they endure that love.
I awoke, and then I knew
What Love said was too-too true;
Henceforth therefore I will be,
As from love, from trouble free.
None pities him that's in the snare,
And, warned before, would not beware.

I dreamed we both were in a bed
Of roses, almost smothered:
The warmth and sweetness had me there
Made lovingly familiar,
But that I heard thy sweet breath say,
Faults done by night will blush by day.
I kissed thee, panting, and, I call
Night to the record! that was all.
But, ah! if empty dreams so please,
Love give me more such nights as these.

Methought last night Love in an anger came
And brought a rod, so whipt me with the same;
Myrtle the twigs were, merely to imply
Love strikes, but 'tis with gentle cruelty.
Patient I was: Love pitiful grew then
And strok'd the stripes, and I was whole again.
Thus, like a bee, Love gentle still doth bring
Honey to salve where he before did sting.

I.

The sweetest dreams, it seems to me, that we can ever know,
Are those the fancy brings to us of days of long-ago,
When rainbow-tinted pictures all are like a mirage flung
Upon the canvas memory weaves--of days when we were young.


II.

The step may falter, eye be dim--the brow may wrinkles wear,
And underneath the crumbling mould our friends be sleeping there--
But oh, these visions come to us as to the rose the dew,
And while with raptured gaze we look the heart seems ever new.


III.

Oh, when perhaps at last we're left a laggard on life's stage,
This is the mellowed draught we quaff our longings to assuage--
As sweet as that from Paradise the smiling Houris hand
The Prophet's faithful followers when at its gates they stand!